Education has been a central mandate of the Guggenheim since it was chartered by the Board of Regents of the University of New York State in 1937. Since then, education has pervaded almost all of the Guggenheim's public offerings, including exhibitions, catalogues, lectures, school programs, tours, brochures, and interpretive texts. In the past decade, the Guggenheim Museum has established major new facilities devoted to education and launched several innovative programs, dramatically expanding its reach to a broad cross section of the public covering all ages, socioeconomic levels, and educational backgrounds.

The core values of the Guggenheim's Education department are excellence in teaching and lifelong learning for adults, youth, and families. Through collaboration with artists as education partners, an embrace of state-of-the-art technology, print and web-based publications, and other communications vehicles, the Education department shares its methodology and research findings nationally and internationally. In addition, the Guggenheim's celebrated international internship and fellowship programs help to develop the museum professionals of tomorrow.